Dr Helen Marshall
Senior Lecturer
School of Communication and Arts
+61 7 336 52999
Researcher biography
Helen Marshall is a Senior Lecturer of Creative Writing at the School of Communication and Arts. She has won the World Fantasy Award, the British Fantasy Award and the Shirley Jackson Award for her two collections of short stories. Her debut novel The Migration released last year argued for the need to remain hopeful, even in the worst circumstances. It was one of The Guardian’s top science fiction books of the year and was recently optioned by Clerkenwell Films.
She has further interests in both modern and medieval publishing cultures. Her PhD examined the codicology and palaeography of late medieval manuscripts from England, looking at how Middle English "bestsellers" such as Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and the anonymous Prick of Conscience made use of traceable networks of production and dissemination. This work builds upon the practical experience she gained working in the publishing industry as the Managing Editor for ChiZine Publications, Canada's largest independent genre press, where she was involved in all aspects of production including editing, marketing and business management. In 2016 she undertook a research project to investigate the publishing history of Stephen King's Carrie (1974), which provided a snapshot of the changing social, economic and cultural environment of the publishing industry when key editorial and marketing decisions fashioned the King brand.
Her current projects explore worldbuilding, franchise writing, and the application of creative arts methodologies for interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary ideation.
Publications
Books
Marshall, Helen, Wilkins, Kim, Bennett, Lisa, Anderton, Joanne and Ivanova, Ksenia (2023). Project Ursula speculative fiction techniques for technology foresight: facilitator handbook. Brisbane, QLD Australia: What If Lab; The University of Queensland. doi: 10.14264/c6a0989
Marshall, Helen (2022). The gold leaf executions. London, United Kingdom: Unsung Stories.
Marshall, Helen (2019). The Migration. Toronto, Canada: Random House Canada.
Marshall, Helen (2014). Gifts for the one who comes after. Toronto, Canada: ChiZine Publication.
Marshall, Helen (2013). The sex lives of monsters. Toronto, Canada: Kelp Queen Press.
Marshall, Helen (2012). Hair side, flesh side. Toronto, Canada: ChiZine Publication.
Book Chapters
Wilkins, Kim, Marshall, Helen and Tulic, Marina (2022). Emerging writers/established publishers: a ten-year study of the Hachette Manuscript Development Program. Creative writing scholars on the publishing trade: Practice, Praxis, Print. (pp. 19-32) edited by Sam Meekings and Marshall Moore. Abingdon, Oxon, United Kingdom: Routledge. doi: 10.4324/9781003041559-2
Marshall, Helen (2021). The Happy Medium. There Is No Death, There Are No Dead: Tales of Spiritualism Horror. (pp. 33-54) edited by Jess Landry and Aaron J. French. New York, NY, United States: Crystal Lake Publishing.
Marshall, Helen (2020). Survival strategies for weird times. The diseases of the head: essays on the horrors of speculative philosophy. (pp. 277-314) edited by Matt Rosen. New York, NY, United States: Punctum Books. doi: 10.21983/P3.0280.1.00
Marshall, Helen (2019). The Nekrolog. Hex Life: Wicked New Tales of Witchery. (pp. 303-326) edited by Christopher Golden and Rachel Deering. London, United Kingdom: Titan Books.
Marshall, Helen (2018). The other tiger. The silent garden collective: a journal of esoteric fabulism. (pp. 13-45) edited by Silent Garden Collective . Toronto, Canada: Undertow Publications.
Marshall, Helen (2018). "Lothly thinges thai weren alle": imagining horror in the late Middle Ages. New directions in supernatural horror literature: the critical influence of H. P. Lovecraft. (pp. 101-126) edited by Sean Moreland. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan. doi: 10.1007/978-3-319-95477-6_6
Marshall, Helen (2017). The Way She Is With Strangers. Dark Cities. (pp. 79-94) edited by Christopher Golden. London, United Kingdom: Titan Books.
Marshall, Helen (2017). Caldera. Unspeakable Horror 2: Abominations of Desire. (pp. 157-175) edited by Liaguna, Vince A. New York, United States: Evil Jester Press.
Marshall, Helen (2017). The Embalmer. The Mammoth Book of The Mummy. (pp. 415-426) edited by Paula Guran. New York, United States: Prime.
Marshall, Helen (2017). Small Press, Specialty, and Online Horror. Horror Literature through History: An Encyclopedia of the Stories that Speak to Our Deepest Fears. (pp. 153-157) edited by Cardin, Matt. Santa Barbara, CA, United States: Greenwood.
Marshall, Helen (2016). The gold leaf executions. CVC anthology. (pp. 13-22) edited by Michael Callaghan. Toronto, Canada: Exile Editions.
Marshall, Helen (2014). All Things Fall and Are Built Again. Dangerous Games. (pp. 263-279) Oxford, United Kingdom: Solaris.
Journal Articles
Jennings, Kathleen, Marshall, Helen and Anderton, Joanne (2023). Science fiction for hire? Notes towards an emerging practice of creative futurism. Text, 27 (2). doi: 10.52086/001c.89087
Marshall, Helen, Wilkins, Kim, Bennett, Lisa, Ivanova, Ksenia and Anderton, Joanne (2023). Support, Structure and Speed: Key Concepts for the Digital Delivery of Creative Foresight Workshops. Journal of Futures Studies.
Wilkins, Kim, Bennett, Lisa and Marshall, Helen (2023). Calibrating possibility. Possibility Studies & Society, 1 (1-2), 275386992311664-235. doi: 10.1177/27538699231166486
Marshall, Helen, Wilkins, Kim and Bennett, Lisa (2023). Story thinking for technology foresight. Futures, 146 103098, 103098. doi: 10.1016/j.futures.2023.103098
Wilkins, Kim and Marshall, Helen (2020). What can we learn about research narratives from professional storytellers?. The STEAM Journal, 4 (2) 11, 1-4. doi: 10.5642/steam.20200402.11
Marshall, Helen (2020). A flare of light or ‘the great clomping foot of nerdism?’: M John Harrison’s radical poetics of worldbuilding. Text, 24 (2), 1-24. doi: 10.52086/001c.18569
Marshall, Helen (2020). A snapshot of an age: the publication history of Carrie. Journal of Popular Culture, 53 (2), 284-302. doi: 10.1111/jpcu.12897
Marshall, Helen (2019). A sci-fi anthology offers widely divergent glimpses of the future. New Scientist, 244 (3253), 32.
Marshall, Helen (2019). The Institute by Stephen King leads a revolutionary sci-fi reboot. New Scientist, 243 (3249), 32.
Marshall, Helen (2019). A surfeit of snake oil. New Scientist, 243 (3245), 32.
Marshall, Helen (2019). Reflections of a broken world. New Scientist, 243 (3241), 32-32. doi: 10.1016/S0262-4079(19)31433-2
Marshall, Helen (2019). Writing the future. New Scientist, 243 (3237), 30-30. doi: 10.1016/S0262-4079(19)31231-X
Marshall, Helen (2019). Experimental words. New Scientist, 242 (3233), 32-32.
Marshall, Helen (2017). They are passing by without turning. Gamut (6).
Marshall, Helen (2017). Survival Strategies. Black Static (58).
Marshall, Helen (2017). Survival strategies. Black Static, 58.
Marshall, Helen and Buchanan, Peter (2011). New formalism and the forms of Middle English literary texts. Literature Compass, 8 (4), 164-172. doi: 10.1111/j.1741-4113.2011.00792.x
Marshall, Helen (2010). What's in a paraph? A new methodology and its implications for the Auchinleck manuscript. Journal of the Early Book Society, 13, 39-62.
Conference Papers
Marshall, Helen (2023). Story thinking in practice. ANU Futures Hub Quarterly Meeting, Canberra, ACT, Australia, 28 March 2023.
Marshall, Helen (2021). Storytelling, worldbuilding problems, and how science fiction can save the world. ‘The stars look very different today’: Migration and Exile in Science Fiction, Cambridge, United Kingdom, 12 June 2021.
Marshall, Helen (2020). Origin stories: starting points for crafting new science fiction. International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts, Orlando, FL, United States, 28 March 2020.
Marshall, Helen (2018). Impact and the creative arts. Transforming Research , Providence, RI, United States, 3-4 October 2018.
Marshall, Helen (2017). Finding Carrie: changing book technologies and the growth of horror in literature. Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing , Victoria, BC, Canada, 9-12 June 2017.
Marshall, Helen (2017). Snapshot of an age: the publishing history of Carrie. The 38th International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts, Orlando, FL, United States, 22-26 March 2017.
Creative Work
Marshall, Helen (2022). The bone girl. Brisbane, QLD, Australia: QML City Symphony.
Research Reports
Anderton, Joanne, Marshall, Helen and Wilkins, Kim (2023). What IF Consortium reports: envision, engage, empathise, inhabit. Brisbane, QLD Australia:
Marshall, Helen , Wilkins, Kim , Bennett, Lisa and Anderton, Joanne (2023). The Ursula Project: Conceptual Framework. Brisbane, Australia: The What If Lab, The University of Queensland. doi: 10.14264/9a5e903
Anderton, Joanne, Ivanova, Ksenia, Marshall, Helen, Wilkins, Kim, Bennett, Lisa and Scott, Haley (2023). Web 3.0 technology impacts and future scenarios. Canberra, ACT, Australia: Human and Decision Sciences Division, Defence Science Technology Group.